BBC Good Food has blocked ChatGPT’s ability to harvest recipes from its site amid fears that “robot chefs” chatbots may replace cooking publishers.
ChatGPT, the chatbot that trains the cooking magazine’s chatbot, is no longer able to “crawl” through web pages.
This comes amid concerns that recipe books and cooking websites will become obsolete once people can ask chatbots to give them meal instructions.
Immediate Media magazine, which publishes BBC Good Food, and licensed the BBC name to the commercial arm of the broadcaster, has said that it is testing the block in order to see how AI bots affect readership.
The restrictions have also been applied to other magazines, including Radio Times and BBC Top Gear.
This is the latest block in a series of rebellions against ChatGPT by major websites that want to stop ChatGPT profiting off their content.
OpenAI, which developed the bot, has been threatened with a lawsuit for copyright violations by major news publishers who have banned ChatGPT.
Amazon and Disney, among others, have blocked the software of this company.
ChatGPT, has amassed millions of users ever since its launch in November last year. was “trained” by using millions of web pages. This allows it to provide information instantly on any question.
One of the most popular uses for the bot is to generate recipes and meal plans. A newer version can create recipes using a photo of the contents in a refrigerator.
Chris Galvin is a Michelin-starred chef who said ChatGPT recipes are “very impressive”.
There have been some concerns about the bot producing dangerous recipes or failing to follow instructions such as ignoring dietary restrictions or avoiding allergens.
ChatGPT is a threat to the recipe websites that have spent many years optimizing their pages so they appear at Google’s top search results.
The Google ranking algorithm rewards websites with more content. This is why online recipes often require readers to scroll through a lot of text in order to get to the ingredient lists.
Immediate Media spokesperson said: “We constantly test and learn around AI. This includes testing tools to explore AI bots’ impact on Immediate Media sites, as well as the content we want them to receive. This isn’t a permanent policy and we expect that things will evolve quickly.
This policy has nothing to do with the BBC’s policy on chatbots, which it is believed is being reviewed separately. Immediate Media purchased BBC Good Food in 2018